Let Light In

What makes this picture fascinating enough that my English teacher shows it at the beginning of each year? Much of it, I think, is the mystery. We cannot see the man's face, and most of his body is covered--enough that I could argue that the wanderer is female, if I cared to. The background is fogged beyond recognition, even more so than the wanderer: we can say with fair certainty that he is a human male, and can see his hair. But does he look on fogged ocean, with rocks jutting from the waves? Does he look on the ruins of ancient temples in a wide, green meadow? Does he look on mountains? All we have are guesses, so we never need stop guessing.

The mystery adds to this piece's artistry. But not all work needs to be mysterious--there are other things even in this work. The careful brush strokes to make realistic hair, or the ragged edges and gradually layering of the fog itself.

The mysteriousness adds to this work, but a work need not be mysterious to be good. Yet critics often say the same thing of works that are comedic: They cannot be 'true' art--whatever that means.

Even our language reflects this reaction: is serious literature good literature, or literature that is not comedic? Comedy cannot be serious literature; it hardly matters. Franz Kafka put this idea as bluntly as one can: "I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?"

Comedies can teach us about life. If every piece of wisdom we gained left us a shattered wreck, all geniuses would be sociopaths in self-defense. There's a limit to how many times one can shatter before losing pieces. And an entirely angsty work has the same issue a saccharine one does: the audience stops caring.

Perhaps comedy does not fill our hearts the way tragedies do. But then, angel food cake won't do if one wants black forest cake. Comedy is not automatically immature. Comedy is not a failed attempt at being tragic. Comedy is a choice to look into another side of our lives.

Anyone who says rain washes away sin has never laughed in the sunlight.

Being

The general prompt: http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Random
Power you get is your super power. Hit random page. Next power that shows up is the power of your arch nemesis.

My Power: Magic (bit of a Superpower Lottery win, there)
My Nemesis's Power: Self-Spawn

Added for fun (I chose which was which before I clicked random, though):
My Sidekick: Stinger Protrusion
Nemesis's Sidekick: Destruction

"I think you should be running the show here."

There wasn't a head, exactly, but the hole in the universe was person-shaped. The head-analogue tipped to one side. "Oh?"

"Yeah." There was a stalemate, between the--um.

"What should I call you?"

"Pardon?"

I shrugged. "I don't have a good short description of you. If you don't give one, I'm going to end up with something like 'Black Hole', and that seems rather melodramatic for your personality."

The being stared and blinked--I think. Vaguely shaded: eyes are tiny. "Absence is a common choice. Those who prefer to humanize generally call me Abby."

"Right. Thank you." There was a stalemate going on, between Abby and me. Technically speaking, she--alright, yes, gender-neutrality, but I was calling her Abby--is the most powerful force in the universe. She is entropy. The slow decay of weathering wood, rusting iron, fire snatching up square meters of forest every second. She's not rot, precisely; rot is life's domain, but she is that moment of conversion inside every organism, taking organized energy and disorganizing it.

I was magic. Not a mage, not a magician, not a witch or a wizard. Simply magic. Components of spells, whether they call by word or symbol or thought, called on me. I was the miracles of the land. Like organization increasing in a closed system.

But, by definition, I was inconsistent. If I happened repeatably, I'd be science, and you'd know me in your world.

And, by definition, entropy is quite consistent.

"You were saying?" Abby inquired coolly.

"Ah, yes. Why do you follow him?"

She shrugged--well, actually, she did an eternally graceful movement best described as a shrug. But I really needed to stop or kiss her, and I was not entirely sure if one survived kissing entropy. "I am destruction. If I am to create something, I require a base."

"So you could make lovely driftwood sculptures."

Absence smiled.

The world outside would go chilly from that. So direct an expression on Absence herself meant no thing would smile for that moment. Here, in front of her, it warmed my soul. "Something like that."

"And that's what my Nina is for: someone to affect the fully material plane. But she doesn't run the show." I spread my hands and joked, "What, does your entropy spread to plans?"

"Yes."

"Ow..." I muttered under my breath, rubbing my ears. Smiles warm the soul; direct statements turn you near-deaf. "Unnecessary roughness."

"Nina is losing."

"What--" I started up. "She's fighting?"

"Injury is also my realm, if by a stretch."

One does not say, 'It can't be so,' to that tone. "...I can't feel her."

Abby nodded calmly. "It appears she does not call upon you, Mistress Margaret."

"Maggie," I said automatically. "It's Maggie. Do you know why not?"

"Divination is your realm, I believe." On anyone else that tone would have been infuriatingly calm, but on Abby is simply was. It would be no more reasonable to be angry at that tone than to be angry at a picture of a black hole.

I cast not-water upon the naught-floor and pulled the truth from it.

"As if she ever thought you near her," the man--Sam?--sneered. He actually sneered, my goodness.

"I am her helper. Of course she did not." A blow, then, to the solar plexus, driving the air hard out of him. The words were confident, but the tone was desperate, and only became moreso. "But I can fight without her. Can you say the same?"

He laughed. "Childish. Your mistress aids me in this fight." Another of him came from behind and landed a blow somewhere low along Nina's back. She went down.

They said, together, "And you can do nothing without her."

I realized I had clenched my jaw when the muscles hurt. "Bastard." He only called upon me in truth to make himself anew, none for sustaining, but this was me; this was my domain, and I could right it.

I touched the surface of the water Abby pressed at me, but that wasn't important and pulled.

Both Sams fell. One was female now, the other still male but the wrong height and build. All of his would soon fall such. He ran the bodies hard, sapping what energy the magic infused in them would throw them into comas. And that was wrong, because some of them would doubtless be in some danger Abby pressed tight on all sides, but I only needed one more minute.

Not even a pull, just a shift. From him to them. He had not spread himself so thin, only to one other who was neither present nor the man himself. "One moment Abby," I breathed, "please."

Sam died, and I sliced off a piece of myself to give to little Nina. She'd keep her spikes, when she wanted them, and heal completely from any injuries she'd gotten under my care.

I shut my eyes. I was done.

"Abby?"

"Hush, bright one."

Then the back of my mind went click.

"Dark," I mumbled back, already lost in her. Not evil, not wrong, but dark to my light; perfect, only missing me as I missed her.

Abby smiled against my ear. "Yes." And it was perfect, and it was beautiful, and it was worth it because she made it so.

One does not survive kissing entropy.

Speaker and Author, Author and Speaker

Sometimes the same and sometimes one's meeker.

Matter-of-factly.

I scare you, you know. When you let yourself think of me. When you let me be here, in front of you, not behind, not out in the corner of your eye, not flickering or glimmering through a cloud or a crowd. When you genuinely, honestly, accept that I am.

I am what I am, and I translate poorly.

You know, I don't have to be scary. I didn't scare you when you were littler. You made a game of me, actually; do you remember? Figuring out what sort of person you were. Most of your firsts. First book read all through, first time you listened to a piece of music because you liked it, not because your parents were playing it. I was there with your first lie, the first thing you took without asking. The first time manipulation failed, too.

With a note of annoyance.

I can help you. But only if I'm standing in front. Not all the time; I'd block your view of everything else. But every once and a while, let me hold up the mirror. Remember where you're worse than you dare admit and that you are better than you recall. Look. Look! You're getting comfortable as yourself; that's what growing up is. But not if you're so dead set against looking at me that you only bother to see your sunburns and scars. Not if you're so determined to never let me in front that you never see your face, until you almost doubt you have one.

Calmer, and tired.

I know. You can see your hands; you can see what you're doing; you can look into still lakes on clear days and see your face. And maybe if you've forgotten me, forgotten even my glimmers, even how I look in the clouds, only notice me when I flicker through crowds of half-remembered faces and spotted mirrors, you might forget that I don't only show you.

Not an order, but still firm enough to be heard.

Call me. Look at the edges. I remind you of yourself, yes, but around the corners where I keep myself clean but that the lakes cut off with blurs and shores and odd angles, where that old mirrors cut off with dots of tarnish, look. You can see the crowd around you. What they say when they think you're not listening. They're not all insults; there's admiration. It's getting better. I swear it's getting better. I swear it will get better.

As one asking for an old friend back.

Come on. Call me. You know the name. You can't have forgotten that much. Even if you only remember the mirror, only the wisp of a dream, you can't have.

A pause. Then, perhaps, a note of desperation.

You can't.

Portfolios 22 and 23 Poetry: The Dark and Lit Twin

Written as a pair, originally "The Dark Twin" and "The Lit Twin".

The night is closing in.
But it isn’t. Not really. Not ‘closing in’.
That is far too harsh a term.
As the crepuscular time closes and full night comes, she beckons softly.
She wraps you, not in warmth, but in experience.
In the chilled air.
In those little smells that only come at night.
Maybe someone’s barbequing.
Maybe you can smell night blooming flowers.
But always she comes softly, leading you to a new land like a mother guiding your first steps.
A lover holding your hand through tough times.
Some only appreciate those warm summer nights, where the moon is full;
As if her job is to be a quieter day.
She does not work to become like him. She simply is.
She fills the sky with deep velvet, indigo, blue, black; her diamonds spread across,
Winking an eye, showing a flash of armor, twinkling like lightning.

Have you ever cried at the sunset or the stars just because they were?
Have you ever really looked?
Or do you walk only in the light, shunning the dark, shunning the crisp chill, shunning the void of black between stars?



Day breaks.
So much hope, so much love, in each new sunrise.
And then…
“Ugh.”
“Five more minutes.”
“I hate Mondays.”
And just like that, you’ve missed the day.
As surely as you had slept through it.
Just as we miss his twin, we miss him.
Not because we sleep, not because we’re scared:
Because we take him for granted or go out teeth bared.
Because we think of day as less sacred than night—
Just because of a little light.

Laughter

Laughter is a full-body experience. The sound, the throat, yes, but also the chest, the belly, the twinkle in the eye. The way you move your feet to balance better, even if you're sitting. The way your entire face lights up with that little twinkle that some say is only from your eyes. The way that aura turns everything around pink for miles.

Laughter, on its own, is good. Bright, pink, happy, joyous, lovely. Undeniably so.

And then context sets in. Perhaps it is so, or becomes more so. Beautiful laughter, musical, bell-like, chiming, lovely, wonderful, infectious--one of the few times that word is used in a good sense. Such is the power of laughter.

But that makes it dark when it twists, doesn't it? Malevolent, maniacal, dark chuckle, like a curse. Can come before or after. The sound darkens from an infant's blanket's pink to deep blood red, not the scarlet of a thin set or the almost brown-black of dried blood, even twisted laughter is very much alive. That deep, dark, scarlet-black of fresh blood pooled deep. Still shining. Still alive. But oh so dangerous.

Yet, still, even as the bottom drops out of your stomach, you may find your nostrils flaring, or a smile in kind tugging your lips. An old feeling in your heart. Fresh blood is hunter's scarlet. It taps right into your instincts. Maybe you're prey this time. Chase or run, predator or prey...or maybe fight. Or maybe hit the deck. And don't ever think there's only one way to do any of those.

And then comes the bell-like laughter, chiming merrily through. Silver, striking. Not a child's color, not an infant's color, so very distant. Exotic is attractive. But a flash of silver, that's deadly. Context, context, context.

Laugh with me. See that little twinkle, feel your heart rise. And don't worry about the different kinds of laughter. I can pet my dog or kick my dog. They are both movements; that alone doesn't relate the two. Not in any way worth noting.

And even if you should note it, it doesn't take the shared joy from the pet, the pain from the blow. Everything relates, one way or another. The close ones are the ones people call opposites. If you remember things are opposites, they are truly entangled. Fire, water, firewater. Up, down, roller coaster. Air, earth, tornadoes. Clear, obscure, transparent. Can you see none of me or all of me? I can hide just as well being transparent as obscure. Better. You don't even know I'm there.

Well color me surprised.